Leading Yale professor opposes Singapore tie-up

Having written extensively about the limits on academic freedom in Singapore, I was rather surprised to see that Yale was in talks with the National University of Singapore about setting up a "liberal arts college" in the restrictive city state. Especially as the UK's Warwick University abandoned an earlier proposal to set up a university in Singapore because of concerns about freedom of speech.

It seems I was not the only one. James C. Scott, one of the leading Southeast Asia-focused academics of the modern era and a professor of political science at Yale, has spoken out against the proposal, according to a story for the Yale Daily News. The college newspaper reported him as saying:

"There’s unlikely to be a cataclysmic moment in which Yale would have to decide instantly whether to leave or stay. It’s more like to be a very gradual diminution of freedom of maneuver in which there’s not obviously some decisive threshold.”

Scott, the story reports, says Yale would be better off setting up a campus in Malaysia, the Philippines or Thailand, which also fall far short of democratic ideals but allow significantly more criticism of the establishment than Singapore.

In his most famous work, Scott argued that popular uprisings in Southeast Asia were driven by "The Moral Economy of the Peasant" - that poor farmers believed they had a right to basic subsistence and would rebel if it was denied them.

Will the Singapore government's particular view of a moral economy, that education (among other things) should be subservient to the politico-economic goals of the ruling caste, drive an uprising among Yale professors?

 

Vietnam contradictions #1

Like any complex subject, Vietnam is perhaps best understood not by attempting gross generalisations but by trying to come to terms with the inherent contradictions.

During my time in Vietnam, I intend to document the many contradictions that surface in the hope of shedding some light on this remarkable, if often confusing, country.

I start with two stories published today in the Dan Tri online newspaper.

One, headlined "Hoan Kiem’s magnificent light show ready to go" sings the praises of the truly spectacular, high voltage light show that is being rehearsed ahead of the celebration of the 1,000-year anniversary of the founding of Hanoi, early next month.

The second, headlined "Vietnam’s power troubles far from over", warns that the country will continue to be hit with chronic power shortages in the coming years.

Hat-tip to Our Man in Hanoi, who I met in person last week, having followed his blog for some time.

 

Asean fears US support over maritime dispute may alienate China

Southeast Asian governments are concerned that the increasingly vocal US comments about the South China Sea disputes could alienate China.

While Western politicians usually like their foreign policy statements bold and clear, the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) prefer the softly-softly approach.

An initial draft of the statement to be issued at the end of Friday's US-Asean summit, prepared by the Philippines, opposed the "use or threat of force by any claimant attempting to enforce disputed claims in the South China Sea," according to an AP report.

But, according to the Bangkok Post, Asean leaders pushed the US to remove any direct reference to the South China Sea for fear of angering China.

Kasit Piromya, Thailand's foreign minister, told the paper:

"We have discussed the South China Sea issue at the Asean Regional Forum to which all the claimant states are members. It might be inappropriate if Asean and the US discuss this issue without China being present. We don't want to be seen as trying to gang up with the US against China."

And Asean appeared to have won this particular diplomatic debate, with the final joint statement not mentioning the South China Sea, saying only:

"We reaffirmed the importance of regional peace and stability, maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with relevant universally agreed principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other international maritime law, and the peaceful settlement of disputes."

However, the White House's official "read-out" of President Barack Obama's meeting with the Asean leaders makes an overt mention of the South China Sea:

"The President and the leaders also agreed on the importance of peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and respect for international law, including in the South China Sea."

Sometimes, you have to wonder why diplomats bother with such circumlocutions.

Hanoi bound

After a longer-than-expected sojourn in London, I'm finally returning to Southeast Asia later this week.

Following Singapore and Jakarta, my new - and hopefully more permanent base - will be in Hanoi, as the Vietnam correspondent for the Financial Times. 

Having first worked in Vietnam back in 2001, it's a long-awaited return to a country of which I grew very fond.

It has been fascinating to observe (from afar) the speed with which Vietnam has been changing as a result of the country's cautious yet sustained moves toward a market economy.

I now have a great opportunity to get a much closer look.

Anyone who wants to get a sense of the scale of the transformation could do worse than check out this video of Hanoi in 1989, replete with trams and bicycles and almost totally devoid of motorbikes and cars, let alone the Bentleys and Ferraris that can be seen on the capital's streets today.

Vietnam hopes closer US ties won't harm China relations

Vietnam's steadily improving relationship with the US provoked the ire of China over the summer after US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told a regional security forum in Hanoi that the peaceful resolution of disputes over hotly-contested islands in the South China Sea was in America's national interest.

Barack Obama will re-iterate this view at a meeting with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Friday, according to an AP report, reassuring Vietnam and the other ASEAN countries that claim some of the Spratly and Paracel islands that the US will not abandon them to China's whim.

Where old rivalries run deep, it often appears that diplomacy is a zero sum game, with Vietnam's growing military and diplomatic cooperation with the US seemingly bound to damage relations with China.

But Vietnam's foreign minister, who I interviewed for the Financial Times recently, believes Vietnam can move closer to both China and the US without alienating either side.

"To enhance relations with the US does not mean we want to be against China," Pham Gia Khiem, who is also a deputy prime minister, told me. "Vietnam has enjoyed good military co-operation with many countries, including China, the Southeast Asian nations and the US. The goal of our military cooperation is to keep and enhance peace and stability."

He welcomed Hilary Clinton's recent comments on the South China Sea dispute but insisted that Vietnam did not want to bring in America as a bulwark against Chinese might.

"We don’t want to engage any country to be against a third country – that’s not our policy."

But he did accept that Vietnam, which has been trying to extend military cooperation with China as well as the US and other Southeast Asian nations, needed to work hard to erode mutual suspicion.

"In relations between Vietnam and other countries, the building of confidence is the most important thing. Confidence building helps avoid scepticism. Vietnam and China want to develop a comprehensive strategic partnership and the foundation is confidence building as it is a good way to reduce doubt."

Singapore government starts to rein in casinos

As I've written before, the Singapore government was placing a big double bet when it decided to legalise casino gambling: that the two casinos would turn a handsome profit and that their success would not bring with it social problems such as crime and addiction.

There's no doubting that the first part of that wager has paid off, with record numbers of tourists coming to the island nation and Singapore's gaming revenue forecast to surpass that of Las Vegas by the end of next year.

While the economic benefits appear clear cut, the social impact is less positive. Since the Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands casinos opened earlier this year, the police have arrested dozens of people for trying to cheat at the gaming tables and the courts have handed down swift and stiff sentences to try to deter future casino criminality.

The government has been more worried by the large number of gambling-crazy Singaporeans who have flocked to the baccarat tables and slot machines. Last week, the Casino Regulatory Authority told the casino operators to stop providing shuttle bus services to Singapore's heartland government housing estates.

This week Vivian Balakrishnan, the minister for community development, youth and sports, wrapped the casino operators on the knuckles. He reminded the operators that the government's aim was " to prevent the casinos from targeting the locals as their principal market".

In an effort to deter them from patronising the casinos, the government has imposed a levy of S$100 per day or $2,000 a year on Singaporeans and permanent residents. But Balakrishnan revealed in Parliament that there have still been more than one million visits by local residents in the few months since the casinos opened - that is more than one visit for every three residents of gambling age (over 21).

The government's plan to use the casinos to bring in big spending foreigners while sparing its citizens the negative consequences of mass market casino gambling will be very hard to pull off.

Singaporean Satirist Mr Brown suggests that the government wants to "have a casino that is there but not really there, existing in some Twilight Zone only foreigners can enter. Enjoy the money it will bring, but not the vices and social problems."

As he notes, having your cake and eating it is never easy.

Lee Kuan Yew gets all reflective in New York Times interview

This week's Saturday profile in the New York Times is a surprisingly reflective interview with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister.

The 86-year-old political gunslinger has shown few signs of mellowing with age, most recently advising Singaporeans to work until they drop dead or risk ruining the island nation's economic prospects.

But, in an interview with a newspaper that his lawyers felt compelled to sue again back in March (a fact not mentioned in the piece), he talks rather movingly about his struggle to face the uncomfortable reality of ageing, his wife's illness and his own mortality:

“I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality,” said Mr. Lee, whose “Singapore model” of economic growth and tight social control made him one of the most influential political figures of Asia. “And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that’s life.”

In a long, unusually reflective interview last week, he talked about the aches and pains of age and the solace of meditation, about his struggle to build a thriving nation on this resource-poor island, and his concern that the next generation might take his achievements for granted and let them slip away.

He was dressed informally in a windbreaker and running shoes in his big, bright office, still sharp of mind but visibly older and a little stooped, no longer in day-to-day control but, for as long as he lives, the dominant figure of the nation he created.

But in these final years, he said, his life has been darkened by the illness of his wife and companion of 61 years, bedridden and mute after a series of strokes.

“I try to busy myself,” he said, “but from time to time in idle moments, my mind goes back to the happy days we were up and about together.” Agnostic and pragmatic in his approach to life, he spoke with something like envy of people who find strength and solace in religion. “How do I comfort myself?” he asked. “Well, I say, ‘Life is just like that.’"

Although he has never seemed fond of apologies, he talks with a hint of regret about the darker days of Singaporean politics, when he locked up a number of political opponents for years without trial:

I’m not saying that everything I did was right but everything I did was for an honorable purpose. I had to do some nasty things, locking fellows up without trial.

But Lee is not yet ready to go gentle into that good night. The interview concludes with him citing a Chinese proverb: Do not judge a man until his coffin is closed.

Close the coffin, then decide. Then you assess him. I may still do something foolish before the lid is closed on me.  

BBC denies bowing to political pressure over dropped Malaysia interview

Earlier this week, I wrote about the BBC's decision to pull a planned Hardtalk interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a controversial Malaysian blogger, because of legal advice.

The decision has been heavily criticised on independent Malaysian blogs and news websites with many accusing the British state broadcaster of caving in to pressure from the Malaysian government.

But the BBC has insisted in a statement that "the suggestion that the item was dropped due to political pressure is untrue." Peter Connors, a press officer for BBC News, told me that the BBC had not been contacted by lawyers or other advisers acting for the Malaysian prime minister or government.

This is the full statement:

The BBC researches many different stories, it is the normal process of news and current affairs throughout the media that not all make it to air for a variety of editorial reasons.

In this case, it became clear in our research that any comprehensive interview with former Malaysia Today Editor Raja Petra Kamarudin would prominently feature issues that are currently the subject of a current court case in Malaysia, which raise issues of defamation.

The suggestion that the item was dropped due to political pressure is untrue. All BBC programmes adhere to the same strict editorial guidelines which ensure complete editorial independence and impartiality.

I suspect that the BBC was most concerned about RPK's persistent claims that Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and members of his family were somehow implicated in the murder of a Mongolian translator and/or an attempt to cover up key details relating to the case - claims that the PM has vociferously denied.

The BBC is keen to play down the affair as nothing out of the ordinary but its decision to drop the interview does appear lily-livered.

From past experience, my hypothesis is that the editorial decision-making process came down to a trade off between time/money/hassle, on the one hand, and news-worthiness, on the other.

While the BBC might risk the ire of (and tempt possible legal action from) the leaders of countries such as Iran, Zimbabwe or Myanmar, I imagine that Malaysia is simply not a big enough global news story to warrrant such risks - especially when the Hardtalk producers have a long list of shows to research and record.

The end result is a victory for the Malaysian government, and its well-remunerated international PR advisers APCO Worldwide, who will be pleased that one of their most vocal and well-connected opponents has been denied 30 minutes of airtime on a leading global TV programme.

Malaysia's opposition activists, meanwhile, are understandly miffed about this missed opportunity.

BBC pulls interview with Malaysian blogger on legal grounds

The BBC's Hardtalk programme has dropped a planned interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a leading Malaysian blogger who fled to the UK, following advice from the broadcaster's lawyers.

RPK, who I interviewed for The Guardian earlier this month, revealed on his blog on Sunday that the BBC had decided to pull the interview, which was due to take place on Wednesday.

I just got off the phone to Bridget Osborne, a Hardtalk producer, who confirmed that the RPK interview had been dropped following legal advice.

"He has made all sorts of allegtaions that we have no way of confirming or denying independently," she said, so the programme's lawyers advised them not to go ahead.

Hardtalk, which describes itself as BBC News' "hard-hitting flagship news programme", has previously interviewed many dictators, dissidents and crackpots who have made countless wild allegations.

But the producer refused to comment any further on why RPK had been dropped when so many other controversial interviews had gone ahead.

It is strange that the BBC appears to have wimped out of interviewing one of Malaysia's leading dissidents. As RPK says, "it is a rare occasion that they have had to drop a program".

But, in defence of the producers, I know from my own experience as a journalist that in-house media lawyers often have a very low risk threshold.

If the whole world was designed like Singapore...

...you could fit the global population into an area the size of Texas.

That's the concept behind the government's 1,000 Singapores pavilion at the international architecture exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

The government believes that it can comfortably fit 6.5 million people into Singapore's 710 sq km (although the current population is around 5 million and I'm not sure the citizenry necessarily share the goverment's desire for another 1.5 million residents).

The projected population of Singapore is roughly 1/1000th of the world population so, using the Singapore city planning model, you could fit the whole world's population into an area of 710,000 sq km  - roughly the size of Texas, a fifth the size of India and a tenth the size of China.

While the idea of rolling out identikit Singapores around the world may fill some with dread, I always found Singapore to be a very nice place to live in terms of urban planning. Only a third of the total land area is built up and, despite the prevalence of slightly dreary high-rise government housing, there are many pleasant open spaces where you can escape.

But while Singapore can offer many positive lessons for urban planners, particularly in fast-growing and seemingly sprawl-addicted Asia, the Lion City's model is not quite as compact and sustainable as it first appears.

Singapore's land area has grown by 22% since the 1960s because of large scale land reclamation projects that have relied on the at times environmentally, socially and politically questionable import of sand from around Southeast Asia. Likewise, the construction industry has depended on cheap sand and cheap workers brought in from all around the region.

John Donne wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent."

Surely the same is true for, erm, islands.

You say tomato, I say incitement to violence

The implementation of laws against incitement to violence or hatred is always problematic as they are very much open to interpretation.

Abdul Malik Mohammed Ghazali, a 27-year-old Singaporean, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly inciting violence after criticising a minister in a comment left on a Facebook page.

Adding to the barrage of criticism on a page called "I hate the Youth Olympic Games organising committee", Abdul Malik attacked Vivian Balakrishnan, the sports minister, for his handling of the event:

"THIS IS THE TIME FOR US TO BURN VIVIEN [sic] Balakrishnan AND THE PAP!!!!!!" he wrote, referring to the ruling People's Action Party. "RALLY TOGETHER AND VOTE THEM OUT!!!" 

[Comment taken from a screen grab published by The Online Citizen, a Singaporean citizen journalism website.]

Abdul Malik has insisted that the use of the word "burn" was metaphorical although he hasn't yet been able to convince Singapore's police of his argument.

The opposition Singapore Democratic Party contrasts his comments with those of one Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister and current minister mentor:

"Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one," Lee once said. "You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac."

As far as I know, Lee has never been arrested by the Singapore police on suspicion of incitement to violence.

 

Trouble down on the (Singapore) farm

Ivy Singh-Lim is one of the few real characters in the rather staid public life of Singapore. An outspoken former head of Singapore's netball association, she has spearheaded attempts to revitalise Singapore's farming hinterland (yes it does have one) in the north of the densely-populated island nation.

I wrote about her mission and her rather unflattering views of the Singapore government in a big feature I did for the Far Eastern Economic Review before it closed down last year (available here).

Unlike some of the other independent voices in the politically repressed city-state, Singh-Lim is plugged in to the establishment. Her husband is a former head of NTUC Fairprice, a leading supermarket chain run by the government "trade union", and she has some influential friends within the ruling regime.

But her drive to turn her farm, Bollywood Veggies, into an "agro-tourism" destination seems to have ruffled some feathers. Her business is currently being prosecuted for allegedly flouting building regulations. Her defence counsel has claimed that she is the target of a malicious prosecution by the Building and Construction Authority.

Ivy is not the sort to back away from a fight so it will be interesting to see how this one turns out. In a recent posting on her website, she says:

Dear Valued Customers,

Some of you may be concerned about the recent TODAY article stating that the gentle-warrior farmer has been "hauled to court" because Bollywood Veggies did not comply with building inspections mandated by the BCA. I was not hauled to court but rather asked politely to appear.

The newspaper reporter did not ask for our side of the story so it was not mentioned that we had already complied with the inspections last year. Please be assured that our farm and bistro are safe to visit. However, if you are worried, please bring along a crash helmet or call us to provide you with an organic "coconut husk" crash helmet.

Mrs. Ivy Singh-Lim
Gentle-warrior Farmer

Quote of the week: James C. Scott on the successful pre-modern state

A monopolistic protection racket that keeps the peace and fosters production and trade while extracting no more rents than the traffic will bear.

Leading Southeast Asia-focused political scientist James C. Scott on the essence of the successful pre-modern state, quoted from his insightful new book The Art of Not Being Governed.

To my mind, his definition also stands true for most modern (or should that be post-modern) states. The book, which I expect will become a new classic of Southeast Asian historiography, seeks to challenge the received wisdom about hill peoples and their relationship with the state.

An insider's view of academic censorship in Singapore

In recent years, I've had many discussions with Singapore-based academics, both locals and foreigners, on the pervasive climate of self-censorship that surrounds those who would conduct research focused on the city-state.

However, with the vast majority of them employed by the state, very few are willing to speak out publicly for fear of jeopardising their positions.

So I'm grateful to Mark R. Frost, co-author of the fascinating new book Singapore: A Biography (reviewed by me here), for the comments he has left on this blog as part of an ongoing exchange between us.

Mark, who is now assistant professor of history at the University of Hong Kong, talks candidly about the censorship, both self-imposed and external, that guided his research and writing. I have published his latest comment below, while our full exchange is here.

Dear Ben,

To answer your first question, yes. But I am not sure I was fully conscious of it until I left Singapore and became reacquainted with what it's like to write in a freer context again. During my 6 years in the city, I definitely became ever more acutely aware of "political sensitivities". Thus, there were comments that came up in interviews with some of Singapore's former political detainees (interviews which are cited in the book) that were not included because they would have possibly resulted in libel actions. There were other things, such as the deviousness of LKY's political negotiations with the British in the late 50s and early 60s, which we could have gone into further (the details have been published) rather than just pointing to them in the footnotes. Was this the result of a subconscious self-censorship or a desire to move the story on? I'm still thinking about that one. But I do recall that, as a foreign academic working at the National Univ. of Singapore, you inevitably became careful about what sort of public criticism you directed at your paymasters. No doubt, this carefulness ultimately seeps into you (though I think good work can be done in Singapore, nevertheless, and many people in academia there continue to do it).

The decision to halt Singapore: a Biography in 1965, and in that sense narrow the narrative, was a very conscious one. I am still not comfortable tackling Singapore's political history after 1965, given the current political constraints in the Republic, and the official control of the archive. I have told publishers who have enquired about us extending the story or writing a sequel that this would involve a narrative far more critical of the ruling party. Repressive political measures that might have garnered a degree of popular support in the turbulent early-60s became, I believe, for many Singaporeans, less justifiable and more reprehensible in the 70s and 80s (culminating with the disgust that many people felt over the treatment of Catholic agitators involved in the so-called "Marxist conspiracy" of 1987).

As for the rise of the PAP, my personal view is that in the late 1950s the PAP was the only viable alternative to colonial rule, once Marshall had bailed - that is, in terms of getting Singapore out of its postwar social and economic predicament. As much as my heart is with the idealists who founded the Barisan, I'm not sure they would have achieved the same practical results as the PAP did in its first 5 years, had they got into power. There were already rifts in the Barisan prior to Operation Cold Store in 1963, and the more one looks into the party at this time, the more chaotic it appears. (Undoubtedly, this chaos was also a result of the pressures exerted upon it by the PAP.)

However, when the Barisan was systematically destroyed, hopeless though its leaders might have proved as technocrats, Singapore turned a corner. From 1963, economic success and political stability were won at the expense of freedom of expression and 'responsible dissent', generating a conformity, an intellectual sterility and a deep loss of historical identity that I hope the Epilogue to the book conveys. That's basically my take on the rise of the PAP. The party became something very different from 1963.

Another long email, sorry. But to answer your other question: the book was peer reviewed by three reviewers. Two were contacted by the co=publisher HKUP, and one by the National Museum of Singapore. The Museum, quite resonably, asked a prominent academic based in Singapore to review the book and indicate any parts that might raise political difficulties. He found none (a scholar with less integrity might have demanded changes, a ministry official would certainly have). In that sense the book was vetted.

The story of the 18-year-old Jakarta suicide bomber

For TV coverage of Southeast Asia, Al Jazeera English cannot really be beaten. This film by Singaporean producers Lynn Lee and James Leong tells the story of Dani Dwi Permana, an 18-year-old Indonesian who walked into the lobby of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta last July and blew himself up, killing five others and wounding many.

The film follows Dani's brother Jaka Karyana as he tries to find out how and why his quiet, unassuming brother transformed into a murderous terrorist. It includes harrowing footage of the bomber's last moments as he is guided to his target via a video call with his terrorist mentor, who keeps shouting "Allahu Akbar" to reassure his young protege as he approaches his grisly end.